“I’ve Had Many People Contact Me Over the Years”: Cohen Addresses the Pee Tape

If there is indeed compromising video footage of Donald Trump engaged with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel—the infamous “pee tape” allegedly in the hands of the Russian government, according to ex-British spy Christopher Steele—former Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen doesn’t know anything about it.

“I’ve heard about these tapes for a long time,” Cohen told Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin on Wednesday during a House Oversight Committee hearing, when asked about the existence of any compromising tapes. “I’ve had many people contact me over the years. I have no reason to believe that that tape exists.”

Steele, who authored a 2016 dossier alleging a conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin during the presidential election, claims that Trump was “compromised” by Russian intelligence as a result of his past visits to Moscow, and that Trump feared he could be blackmailed. The salacious centerpiece of this alleged conspiracy revolves around Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow, when he stayed at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. According to Steele’s sources, Trump was filmed by F.S.B. operatives with “a number of prostitutes” who performed a “‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him.”

Trump has repeatedly denied the existence of the tape, and has said the allegation couldn’t be true because he is a “germophobe.” (According to former F.B.I. director James Comey, Trump told him in private that “there were no prostitutes, there were never prostitutes,” and that he didn’t need to pay for sex.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not denied that his government might have compromising information about Trump. “It’s difficult to imagine nonsense of a bigger scale than this,” Putin said, via a translator, when they met in Helsinki last year. “Well, please, just disregard these issues, and don’t think about this anymore again.”